around fifty. But a girl of fifteen or so hung onto him and screamed that I shouldn’t do anything to him, he was her father."
"So what did you do?" Zuzik can hardly wait to know.
"I passed the father to a comrade and went back into the house with the girl. At first she resisted and bit me in the hand. But when I pointed my gun at her she calmed down. She was horribly dirty, but had a body like a young woman. Pity I had to shoot her."
"What? You killed her?" Zuzik sounded disappointed. As if he had hoped to find the girl somewhere.
"Disgusting!" remarked Tarzan. "Or is that supposed to be a heroic deed?"
"Did I have any choice?" Kebab defended himself. "You don’t know our company commander at the time, Addi. That donkey. Actually a nice fellow, but about things like that - just crazy. Before every operation he used to swear that he would shoot any of us who so much as touched a woman. Our orders were to kill only the men. If the girl had run to him - he would have had me up in front of a mil-itary court."
"I wouldn’t have done that," Tarzan explained. "To fuck a girl and then shoot her? That is too much!"
"Don’t pretend to be so saintly!" Kebab said angrily. "I know very well that, before every attack, all of you are dreaming of catching an Arab girl."
"Now we no longer have the chance," said Zuzik sadly. "They all run away before we come. And if one does remain, then it is an old one, like the one in Daba."
"How her body jumped, when Nachshe pumped her full of lead," Kebab mused. "With this weapon you can finish off three donkeys with one bullet."
Nachshe gazed lovingly at his Luger. "At first they wanted to give me a Mauser. But when I saw this Para, I wanted that or the whole business would have come to nothing."
"Idiot!" said Jamus. "A Mauser is much better. I wouldn’t swap my Mauser for three of those."
Jamus envied Nachshe. Jamus was, after all, the first in the com-pany to have a pistol. He is the one who started this fashion. One day he came back from leave, with this gigantic Mauser hanging from his belt and almost pulling his trousers down. He claimed that the